"Tessio" isn't at the top yet. But it is nine and a half minutes long, and kind of an undertaking.

Top ten with playcounts:

1. "Party and Bullshit" - Biggie Smalls - 14
2. "Kevin Rowlands 13th Time" - Dexy's Midnight Runners - 6
3. "Tessio" [Present Lover] - Luomo - 4
4. "All N My Grill" - Missy Elliott f. Big Boi & Nicole - 4
5. "Still the Same" - More Fire Crew f. Dizzee Rascal - 4
6. "Beware of the Boys" - Punjabi MC f. Jay-Z - 4
7. "Crazy in Love" - Beyonce - 3
8. "Baby Boy" - Beyonce - 3
9. "This is What She's Like" - Dexy's Midnight Runners - 3
10. "My National Pride" - Dexy's Midnight Runners - 3

It turns out that #11 is also Punjabi MC f. Jay-Z, which I've played 3 times. That's the version from the S. Carter Collection Mixtape; it has two Jay verses where the one at #6 above only has the first verse (but that one is still a longer track, and it's just the beat and singing for like two minutes at the end). It would be nice if I could consolidate these, but I suppose I would actually feel scandalized if iTunes let me play around with something as sacred as playcounts.

How do the various aspects of the style of the Investigations serve its purpose(s)?

This question is like the previous one, but I have framed it differently. I just urged attentiveness to Wittgenstein's style, but I fear I haven't emphasized enough what I mean. It depends on a distinction between a philosophical purpose that uses style as a means to that purpose, and a philosophical purpose that is in some sense constituted by style. I am not even sure what I mean by this.

...

(I want to make the distinction in order to make room for the latter possibility, purpose constituted by style. This is because it's the one that will most obviously require us to focus in on every aspect of style in the overall patchwork of styles that is the book. It's something like an insistence that we get all of the evidence; prematurely determining the book's purpose to be the former kind, one using the book's style as a means, seems as if it might happen much more readily when we attempt to stand too far back, or are selective about the aspects of style we consider.)

Why is the Investigations written the way it is?

The book is unusual as compared to both normative philosophical writing, and books in general. It is not written in any recognizable form, such as the essay or technical paper, although it has affinities with the dialogue, the aphorism, the confession, the parable, and others. Although it is divided into two parts, and each of these into smaller parts, these divisions do not give the book an obvious large-scale structure. Locally, we might be comfortable calling the book an argument. But if so, it's an argument in the more conversational sense. From section to section, a particular claim might be debated, attacked, scrutinized, entertained, clarified, transmuted. Or, a number of different claims might be advanced as a result of damaging criticism - but the entire run of sections will still center on the same topic, such as how words mean things, or what it means to follow a rule. Yet these patches of continuity are punctuated by changes of subject (sometimes apparently unrelated, sometimes subtly related) which do not always settle back down into relatively well behaved passages of argument. And despite of the use of the word "argument" here, the arguments carried on in the book are remarkably resistant to more conventional reformulation, making conventional philosophical engagement with it difficult. This difficulty is compounded by Wittgenstein's reluctance or refusal to advance positive theses, or really any theses. It's compounded even further when Wittgenstein leaves his technical terms like "language-game" or the provocative "life-form" apparently unelaborated, leaving him open to misreading, or criticism that he fails to hold himself to the same standards he applies to his targets.

There's more. There are gnomic pronouncements, especially about the nature of philosophy. There are unfavorable remarks about philosophers - usually not specific ones, but apparently all of them. There are, as has often been noted, parts that are: funny, strange, exhortative, ironic, banal, poetic. There are pictures. There are examples - lots of them.

I can't go on, though I should. I have said this much about how strange a book the Investigations is because I think its strangeness demands explanation, but the briefest argument I can give to that effect is short-circuited by a well-entrenched point of view in philosophy. The argument is this: if the way the book is written is essential to its purpose as a piece of philosophy, then we should attend carefully to the way it's written. There is convincing evidence that the way the Investigations is written is essential to its purpose as a piece of philosophy. But that evidence puts Wittgenstein on the wrong side of the old and casually observed boundary between reasoning and rhetoric. Evidence is hardly necessary, anyway, because the fact that there is such a divide, together with philosophy's identification with reasoning and thus opposition to rhetoric, means that the only things that are supposed to be essential to a book of philosophy are its arguments.

So instead of considering the book's style and form seriously, philosophers, including Wittgenstein scholars, ignore them or quickly explain them away (with explanations like: that's just how he wrote, it's meant to complement or flatter his conception of philosophy, he's avoiding his obligation to give clear arguments, yes it's interesting but). But the book is so extraordinarily different that I can't see why we wouldn't take that difference seriously in every respect, in order to understand whether it's philosophically important or not.

Questions that should be addressed by any synoptic reading of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations:

Why is the book written the way it is?
How do the various aspects of the book's style and form serve its purpose(s)?
Does Wittgenstein advance any theories or take any philosophical positions?
Why does(n't) he?
Does the book contain any technical concepts?
Why did Wittgenstein stop writing about ethics?
What are we supposed to do with the book?
What can we do with the book?

If you get sleepy when reading a book, go to sleep!

Dramatic tension, that is, borrowed from simulated realism.

The central conceit in Big's "Suicidal Thoughts" is that he kills himself at the end, after rehearsing his litany of suffering ("reasons", you might say, if there are reasons for suicide). But it's also made to sound like a phone call - you can hear the person on the other end become more and more agitated as he realizes what Big is saying, and the longer Big ignores him. Something about this feels wrong. I'd prefer to have just Biggie's monologue. The person on the phone is meant to add some kind of dramatic tension, I suppose, but I don't want it. Big's part has enough of that. I would have liked to have said that it comes from some kind of progression in his lyrics, but looking at them now I'm not so sure.

Ice cream trucks, again.

Until I moved into my new place in Minneapolis (apparently there weren't enough children near Macalester), I had never seen an ice cream truck before. It took me a while to realize there was one to look at - the driver kept ringing a bell that sounded like an old fashioned fire alarm, and I just got aggravated at whoever was making noise outside. Then he started playing the creepy music.